Ten Tips

1.) Take Your Time - It's a complete and utter understatement to say that Fallout: New Vegas is a time-suck. In reality, it's much, much more than that. New Vegas isn't something you can just pick up and optionally put a lot of time into. Really, you're going to be required to dump time into New Vegas if you have any hope of getting through the game's main narrative, which really only makes up for perhaps five or ten percent of the entire game. With that said, journeying through New Vegas will require patience and a willingness to lose time playing the game. We highly recommend you take your time with the experience, and see and do everything in the game that you possibly can. Some of the game's greatest gems, in fact, are ancillary quests and location explorations that you don't even have to undertake to get through the game. New Vegas isn't for someone who is looking for a ten or twenty hour experience, or even a fifty hour experience. Set aside a hundred hours or more if you really, really want to experience Fallout: New Vegas the way it was meant to be experienced. Otherwise, you're missing out.

2.) Experiment - Your experience in Fallout: New Vegas won't be a static one, even if for some reason you want it to be. The game is meant to be played and experienced differently by different gamers. Because of this, the one thing you're going to want to do as you go through the game is experiment, and this rings even more true if you intend on playing through the entire game more than once. If you're going to do the latter, you should bring the experimentation level up to a whole different echelon. Try talking to people in different ways, try befriending different factions and making enemies of other ones, and try to build out your character in different ways. For instance, a strong character that uses melee weapons and his fists to fight is a far different character than one who stresses energy weapons and stealth abilities. Fallout: New Vegas is all about drawing out these various permutations, so be sure to succumb to this aspect of the game's design, as it will no doubt maximize your enjoyment.

3.) Scour For Experience - Fallout: New Vegas is a lot of things. It's a sandbox, open-world game that stresses combat and character interaction. But at its very core, it's also a statistically-based game of numbers, and you know what that means... it's an RPG! Virtually all RPGs have some sort of leveling-up system, and Fallout: New Vegas is no different. Experience points will allow your character to level up from level 1 to level 30, and in between each level, you'll get to use skill points to make your character stronger (and occasionally get to swipe a new perk, too). These skill points are key, because dumping them into one of the game's skills will allow your character to do various activities more effectively. Therefore, you should be sure to scour for experience everywhere you can. All quests give you experience for completing them, as does killing enemies and creatures. But keep in mind that successfully bartering or completing a speech check, discovering new locations, hacking a computer or breaking through a locked door can earn you experience too!

4.) Lockpick and Science - We stressed this earlier in the Basics section, but stressing it again for good measure can't hurt or hinder... it can only help. Lockpick and Science are absolutely, positively amongst the most important non-combat skills in the entire game, and building them up steadily as you level up is integral if you want to see and do everything the game has to offer you. With a high Lockpick skill, locked doors will become easier and easier for you to unlock, while a high Science skill allows you to hack through the defenses of even the most ardently-protected computers. Be sure to dump points into Lockpick and Science from the get-go, and you won't be sorry. If you neglect these skills, however, expect to find increasingly numerous amounts of locked doors and sealed computers that you won't be able to do anything with. And that would be your loss if that happens (and make your life a whole lot more difficult, too)!

5.) Speech and Barter - Just like with tip #4, which stressed the importance of the Lockpick and Science skills, here, we're going to stress another two skills we already discussed earlier in the Basics section, Speech and Barter. Speech and Barter are essentially just as important as Lockpick and Science, albeit for different reasons. Thus, you'll want to dump whatever skill points you can into these two skills, too. The Barter skill will allow you to purchase items for cheaper than you otherwise would, and sell items for more money. But the Barter skill will also allow you to force negotiations with many people who give you side quests and other tasks to earn more money and better loot and prizes for your hard work. Speech, on the other hand, has a much more straight-forward use, and it's to convince various people to see things the way you do. The higher your Speech skill, the easier it will be to tell people to do things and act in a way that you want them to, which will be hugely beneficial to you. Thus, in addition to Lockpick and Science, tent to the Speech and Barter skills, too. You won't be sorry that you did... you'll really only be sorry if you didn't. You've been warned!

6.) Don't Over-Extend - Okay, it's true. Fallout: New Vegas is all about exploration. You can quite literally do whatever you want in the game (though there are consequences to be had with just about every choice you make, which you will ultimately find out for yourself). But you don't want to get too crazy with the exploration, especially very early in the game. While you're still weak, try to stay close to safe areas, chipping away at weaker enemies and completing simple tasks and quests. Later, when your character gets stronger, and when you have more powerful equipment at your disposal, you can begin to work your way further and further out of your comfort zone. Either way, you should save as often as you can, because you never know when you're over-extending until it's too late... well usually, anyway.

7.) Side Quest With Regularity - A quick addendum to this tip would be to side quest with regularity and as early as you can. The reason you want to side quest regularly and early is simple. Not only is side questing a great way to earn lots and lots of experience points, but it's also a good way to start making friends with many of the game's towns and settlements, and most importantly with the Mojave Wasteland's various warring factions. As you work your way further and further through the game's main plotlines, you'll inevitably start making enemies, which will start pitting you against certain factions in the name of other factions. This will end up cutting you off from a great many side quest, so this is really the most important reason to side quest regularly and early. Because if you wait too long to undertake many side quests, being able to complete them or not may depend entirely on whether you're in good standing with a certain faction or not. So why not try to please everyone early, and then go from there.

8.) Make Choices Carefully - We've already established the many things Fallout: New Vegas is. But another thing it happens to be is a game where choices prove to be of the utmost importance. How you conduct yourself everywhere in the game has repercussions, and it's important that you carry yourself in a way that's compatible with how you're trying to work your way through the game. Good or bad, you should try to remain consistent, or you'll muddle your experience. But either way, you'll be making choices a lot where it's not even clear that you are, especially during conversations with the game's hundreds upon hundreds of NPCs. Because of this, you'll want to carefully navigate the game's conversation trees and their surrounding events. The best way to be sure you're making choices carefully, however, is to simply save often. If you don't like the way something turned out, whether it be an event, fight or conversation, you can simply reload a recent save and try things in a different way.

9.) Tend To Your Gear - This is easy to overstate, but then again, it's easy to understate, too. You'll really want to be cognizant not only of the condition of your armor and weapons, but also just what you're carrying with you as well, and what the condition of those items are. Remember -- you're bound to a strength-weight ratio that will only let you carry so much (dependent on your character's strength in S.P.E.C.I.A.L.), so you can't carry everything you want, snag everything you find in the environment, or more. You'll be encumbered before you know what hit you. What's most important to remember here, though, isn't only to carry only what you need and sell or drop everything else, but to make sure your gear is in good repair, too. A weapon that's on the verge of breaking won't be able to give you its full damage potential, and armor that's wearing down will provide less and less protection. There are few things more important than dealing damage and protecting yourself from damage, so tending to your gear (even apart from the obvious inventory management aspect of this entire ordeal) is integral to your success.

10.) Explore Locations - And finally, we've come to the final tip in our Ten Tips for Fallout: New Vegas. This one may seem obvious, but let us explain. The Mojave Wasteland, where all of the events in Fallout: New Vegas take place, is absolutely rife with locations. There are scores and scores of them to uncover, from big buildings, compounds and camps to the most minor of locations, like destroyed caravans, cave entrances and abandoned shacks (and everything in between). Scouring the map for new locations won't only earn you minor amounts of experience points, but it will allow you to find new people and new things of interest to explore. And better yet, the more locations you add to your map, the more locations you'll be able to quick-travel to. And as you'll find out (or already know if you're a veteran of Fallout 3), quick-traveling is absolutely vital if you want to get around the Wasteland in as little time as possible. So explore, explore, explore!